Grace is Gossamer

I used to whisper in my oldest son's ear at night,
"Love Jesus," and now I wish I hadn't done that
because it's a weighty thing to say;
it's too weighty.

It's the weight of a first born mother
telling her firstborn son to worship,
as if getting to know the Almighty were as simple to follow
as a recipe for chicken noodle soup.

Two teaspoons of unsalted butter.
Three stalks of chopped celery.
Two diced carrots.
Make them sweat, Son, before you add the broth.

It can't be done that way.

It's not that I'm a Calvinist, see,
but I've always done wrong by trying to make
my heart the Divinity chaser,
trying to make my love worth love,
trying to slap mud on rudimentary, homemade cathedrals
woven from split reeds I found in the woods.

I stay a little bit nervous
about bears,
and I'm not sure where that happened,
maybe in some Baptist church way back, way back
when some preacher was telling me that I might miss out
on glory.

Or maybe keeping your foot on the accelerator
is just a natural casualty of being a first born of a first born.
But no wonder my kind has always stood out in a field sulking
while some renegade kid comes home from a party
to a party --
because my kind digs holes, digs holes, digs holes
and expects heaven to come up wherever we plant it.

Sins of a parent go down three generations they say.
Trauma gets in the DNA and changes a person
inside out, and probably bad theology does the same.

Lord, forgive me,
for I tried to push the same gravity on my children
that I tried to carry inside myself
when Your yoke is easy
and Your burden is light.

Grace is gossamer,
sunlight caught in a spider's web,
it is lake water thrown from the tail of a carp,
and that is so hard for me to believe, no matter what you say.

I wish I had taken more deep breaths,
taken more cool baths.
just reveled,
just waited,
just watched glory before trying to make anything of it at all but wonder,
just whispered, "You are loved,
and Honey, that's the sweetest thing in all the world."

- - -

Art: Photo by my dear and gifted friend Carey Pace (www.careypace.com)